I thought the Takács Quartet set the bar pretty high with last year’s Hyperion recording of the two Janáček string quartets, but that was before Swiss outfit Quartetto Energie Nove released this gem on the Dynamic label.

Made up of the principal string players of the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, the foursome has a slim discography – just the two Prokofiev quartets – but the sheer quality of their playing and the marvellous production standard of both these albums argue strongly that we should be hearing a lot more of them in the future. Energie Nove – violinists Hans Liviabella and Barbara Ciannamea, violist Ivan Vukčević (an Aussie!) and cellist Felix Vogelsang – bill this release as a world premiere of a “critically edited and ‘Urtext’ version” of the two quartets.

The main changes are in the second, Intimate Letters, written in the last year of the composer’s life and which was being rehearsed for its premiere by the Moravian Quartet just before Janácˇek died. Some changes had been made at these rehearsals attended by the composer, the chief among them being his decision to abandon the use of the viola d’amore in favour of its more conventional four-stringed cousin.

When the...